We enjoy imaginative experiences because at some level we don't distinguish them from real ones. This is a powerful idea, one that I think is basically—though not entirely—right. (Certain phenomena, including horror movies and masochistic daydreams, require a different type of explanation.)

The capacity for imaginative pleasure is universal, and it emerges early in development. […] In some cultures, play is encouraged; in others, children have to sneak off to do it. But it is always there. Failure to play and pretend is a sign of a neurological problem, one of the early symptoms of autism.

Bloom argues that fiction can act as augmented reality, “just as artificial sweeteners can be sweeter than suger,” though he qualifies this statement with the fact that we care just as much about the fascinating events of fiction when they happen in the real world, citing that millions of people tuned in to watch the O.J. Simpson trial.

Bloom doesn’t touch on the fact that engaging “real life” events l— the O.J. Simpson trial, the bombing of Pearl Harbor — are experienced at one remove. The mediation of a television or other devices offers us both real and imaginary stories. It’s not unreasonable to suspect that just as there is some part of us that experiences the imaginary as real, there may be some part of us that experiences remediated reality as imaginary.

by Mark Wernham. Machine #69 recalls Ryman’s 253, and especially Bob Arellano’s Sunshine ’69 both in its embrace of arbitrary connection and its fond nostalgia for the era when cheap booze, good drugs, fast cars and hot guns seemed to offer everything worth wanting and when nothing was worth wanting very much.

A new hyperromance for the Web. Sparsely linked, La Farge’s new hypertext nods at Stephanie Strickland’s design and to Michael Joyce’s direct address to the reader. but brings a new voice and sensibility to Web fiction.

Multimedia notes from underground, where a traumatized girl furnishes a cozy space in an underground tunnel. Script by Lynda Williams, music and code by Andy Campbell and Matthew Wright. A web work that’s especially nice on the iPad. (The floor lamp is a nice allusion. Get it?)